Donald Trump has lowered the standards for president of the United States to such a degree that any similar shortcomings of those who run for that office in the future will no longer seem so important.

Before Watergate and muckraking investigative reporting, the personal sex life of FDR, Dwight Eisenhower and JFK were not reported publicly until later by historians, though their indiscretions were hardly secret among those in their closer circles. I live within two miles of Ike's summer White House and locals kept rumors to themselves.

I remember painfully the ignominy Jimmy Carter suffered when he admitted he had "lust in his heart." The cries of hypocrite ran out. How quaint that seems today. In his memoirs of his early life I read Carter appeared to be a red blooded American young man like any other until he met the love of his life, Rosalynn. They have been married nearly 72 years.

Now, running on cable is a story of my once local Colorado idol, Sen. Gary Hart, a candidate for president who was caught with a lovely on his lap on a boat named Monkey Business. I was disappointed and angry with him. He had just deprived the United States of a very bright mind with great political judgment because his reputation of personal judgment and his candidacy were flushed down the toilet. Ye gads, loyal wife Lee Hart and I had met while carpooling our children to kindergarten.

Ronald Reagan, movie star and America's first divorced president, was devoted to Nancy, his second wife. The Bushes, the Fords, and the Obamas were beyond reproach.

Bill Clinton was another story, but even his dalliance with an intern and evidence of prior affairs that got him impeached appear petty compared with the hijinks of Donald Trump and Stormy, Access Hollywood, tapes and 16 witnesses attesting to his grabbing habits were not an empty locker room boast. Even salacious unverified parts of the Steele dossier did not make a dent. Any candidate who follows him will be immunized by comparison from accusations of having more than a wandering eye.

Usually a president represents a person who some young person can aspire to be. Ask yourself: Would you want your child or grandchild to grow up to be like Donald Trump?

Donald Trump has lowered the bar on more than just character standards for president. Any GOP candidate who dares use the argument that such and such a social program cannot be enacted because it would create a deficit will no longer be able to make that argument stick. The guffaws from the left will drown them out.

Donald Trump in his second year in office has run up the budget deficit, highest since 2009 right after the great recession. He signed the bill into law when the GOP threw an additional $1.7 trillion into the deficit hole with the tax cut to the wealthy.

It is no wonder in polls conducted by NBC/WSJ in January that the most frequent words associated with Donald Trump were "disgusted" (38 percent), "scared" (24 percent), "angry" (11 percent), and that was before the Stormy saga. Only one-half of Trump voters per a UGov poll last week thought the Trump-Stormy affair was immoral, so I imagine President Trump will weather Stormy, too.